Eisner just happened to be there because he was taking his grandkids on a vacation. Iger does visits the parks and is familiar with the attractions and the happenings of each resort.
Yes, he was taking his grandkids on a vacation and proudly showing off a resort he helped build.
When does Iger go to WDW when there isn't a business reason? When is he ever seen riding Tron Track or Little Mermaid or Tot with his wife and kids? Just enjoying a large piece of the media company he runs?
How about never?
Eisner is the one who put the current leadership team in place, helped corrode the culture at WDI and Walt Disney Animation, used Tony Baxter as a scapegoat and threw him in a position where he couldn't do anything for decades, propped up losers like Michael Ovitz, Paul Pressler, and Cynthia Harris, etc.
The current leadership is due to Bob Iger and Jay Rasulo. Let's look at who has been running the company for the last nine years. The leadership at every resort has changed since Michael was CEO, some multiple times. New positions have been created as well (see Meg Crofton). I don't want to be an Eisner apologist, so I'm just going with the facts.
The culture at WDI has been poison for decades. The reality is Michael had very little to do with what happened there daily, much like Bob. WDFA was absolutely run poorly in Michael's later years, BUT ... it wouldn't have existed at all by then, let alone created all those amazing hits and IP that is beloved around the globe IF Michael hadn't of come to power to start with. FA was dead before he arrived. And while he made some major mistakes with it (largely hiring the wrong people to run it), it sure doesn't look dead now. So, let's simply say they had a great period followed by a relatively short down period and they are back near the top again.
Baxter, as much as I personally like and respect him, was often his own worst enemy. And anyone who knows him and knows how he conducted himself will tell you the same. ... And, notice, that he wasn't forced out of the company by Michael. No, that happened after almost a decade of Bob's leadership where Bob never seemed to care about Tony's talents and left him on the sidelines.
Ovitz was a disaster that even Michael would admit. But, at the time, it didn't seem to be a bad hire. Ovitz was that generation's Ari Emanuel.
Pressler and Harriss were both highly regarded executives in the retail field that helped grow The Disney Store chain. The mistake was moving them into P&R positions. .... But again, that is something that Bob has no trouble doing as well.
At least Paul ran DL before becoming head of P&R, Tom Staggs had no parks experience whatsoever.
Eisner is the one who ruined Epcot because he felt it wasn't hip enough, he is the one who A-ok'd the wand on SSE, the Vietnam memorial in the front of epcot, and the giant Pin trading Hat in front of the Great Movie Ride. He took control of the Tomorrowland'98 and Disneyland 2nd. gate projects and replaced Disney appropriate concepts with extremely terrible and out-there anti-disney stuff that he then cut the funding for and when the projects came out like garbage he threw his subordinates under the bus and walked away from the mess.
One man didn't ruin EPCOT. ... wait, why am I arguing this point by point with you? You simply have a hate for the man and it is much easier to blame someone who is gone and has no decision-making power than it is to blame the guy who is running the company now and has been for almost a decade.
It's Iger who had to clean up Eisner's mess by getting the board to spend $2 billion to salvage DCA, giving away the farm to Steve Jobs to get back into his (and Pixar's) good graces, mending the fence with George Lucas, Attempting to bring back traditional fairy tale stories and hand drawn animation, etc. and he's done an outstanding job of it which is why Disney stocks are soaring to all time highs under Bob Iger.
Has everyone suddenly forgotten about how bad Disney animation was pre-Lasseter? Remember Chicken Little and Home on the range? Remember the nonstop flood of direct to video cheaply made Disney sequels? The state of the parks (where some people actually died because maintenance was being neglected)?
Let's be blunt: Jobs was an egomaniac who is somehow viewed as a visionary because he has created products that people who want to be hip buy. The reality is no one was going to pony up the kind of dollars Pixar was asking for, but Disney. I know this one. Pixar was either going to go it alone and lose Disney's marketing machine or they were going to become part of the company. The fact John Lasseter hated Michael almost as much as a day sans wine doesn't change those realities.
And if your measure for the success of a company is strictly based on the price per share, then you can't also claim to give a damn about what kind of product that company creates or how it makes that price happen.
